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Moving from Blogger to WordPress? You can read in this post what you should know before making any decision.

Now that you have hopefully found out whether Blogger is good enough for you or you need WordPress, it is time to move on!

This article will take a look at the practical part: how to actually transfer all of your blog posts into your shiny new WordPress installation and how to get rid of the problems that come with this.

Before digging into it, have you already thought about a hosting service for your new site? I’ve a dedicate server with HostGator, but you may want to take a look also at other hosting services. Read here SiteGround review.

How To Import Your Blogger Blog Posts

Fortunately no – you don’t have to open up each and every post and copy/paste its content into WordPress. Importing your posts is actually the easy bit.

Here are the steps you have to follow to migrate your posts to WordPress:

Now you have to find and replace all “http://www.yourdomainname.com” instances with the URL of your new WordPress blog

Alternatively here is video tutorial to show you how to that:

Setting The Permalink Structure

Now that you have finished with importing the blog posts, you need to take care of another important aspect. That is namely your blog’s link structure. You probably know what that structure in Blogger-powered blogs is but just in case:

http://BLOG NAME.blogspot.com/YEAR/MONTH/BLOG POST.html

As you can see, the date of the post stands before the actual permalink. This might not look bad for the visitor, but it isn’t ideal when it comes to search engines.

In Google’s eyes the more emphasize you’d like to put on a keyword, the closer that keyword should be to the beginning of the article, the headline or the URL.

That’s not what we have in the above example. What Google sees as more important in that Blogspot URL is the date of the post, which is obviously not what we need.

To fix this, you need to open up your WordPress dashboard, scroll down to “Settings” –> “Permalinks”, choose “Post Name” (http://reviewzntips.com/sample-post/):

How to Fix the Broken Links

One very annoying problem that occurs after importing your blog posts is that not one of your internal links will work.

Whenever you sign in to your WordPress dashboard, you just need to check if there are broken links. The plugin does all the work and inform you about any dead links found. The good thing is you don’t have to edit each instance of the same link, since the changes apply to all identical URLs.

How and Why You Should Generate Post Thumbnails

Post thumbnails are used by all those plugins, dedicated to showing a list of related, recent, popular, etc. kind of articles either in your sidebar or under your blog posts.

Having one (or all three) of those plugins is a great way to keep visitors just a little longer on your site.

Allowing thumbnails to be shown generally improves click-through rates, since images are a far better way to catch one’s attention than simply using plain text.

The problem with moving from Blogger to WordPress is that although your images will still be there, no thumbnails will be assigned to them hence the widgets won’t be able to display them.

Fixing the problem however is quite an easy task!

The only tool you need is Auto Post Thumbnails. Once you install it, you simply go to your WordPress dashboard –> Settings –> Auto Post Thumbnails –> Generate Thumbnails.
The rest of the process is entirely automated.

Moving From Blogger to WordPress…It’s Done!

Now that you followed the above steps, you are pretty much done.

What you need now are some great plugins to lighten up your WordPress blog!

Moving from Blogger to WordPress… It seems like the latter is what everyone prefers these days.

Just consider that WordPress powers 25% of all websites (according to a study by w3techs.com of November 2015).

Take a minute to do some research and you will see that a good percentage of the bloggers out there don’t really like the Blogger platform.

In this post, I will talk about the two platforms and more specifically when Blogger is better and when you should go for WordPress instead.

Why Blogger is Good for Newbies?

Yes, Google’s platform does have its good sides, my dear Blogspot critics. Think about those days when you got into blogging and learned about that great piece of software called WordPress.

Setting it all up and writing your first article wasn’t as easy, was it?

Setting everything up and starting to publish right away is something that Blogger does way better. The process is straightforward – no installations are needed and there is no need to deal with buying and configuring a hosting service. You also don’t have as much fancy functions, which for a guy, who is just starting out, would be more of a headache than a facilitation.

So if:

You are just learning what blogging is and how it works

You want simplicity and not a lot of things to go wrong

You’d like to learn some HTML and CSS in the process (they allow for slight customization on your theme plus they are easy to learn and useful in the long-term)

If one of the above is true then the Blogger platform might just be the better option for now. And don’t take it wrong – you can still get thousands of monthly visitors.

Why Blogger Becomes an Obstacle?

As I said above, the two great things that you don’t have to deal with when you are on Blogspot are hosting and… WordPress.

In reality neither the first, nor the second is an unsolvable puzzle. But then again, all problems that arise in this early stage of a blogger’s career can easily kill the enthusiasm. And that might get you to quit faster than it took you to get started.

If you have content that’s worth sharing and if you do a good job at promoting your posts, then sooner or later, you will get noticed. When that happens you will certainly start to pay more attention to the competition and the fancy toys they have access to…

If You are a Serious Blogger, You Need Functionality

So yeah, as good as Blogger is for beginners, it simply loses edge on the functionality part.

For one reason or another (probably because everyone criticizes it) there simply aren’t enough widgets and plug-ins available to help you customize each and every aspect of your blog. Whereas when we talk about WordPress, plug-ins and flexibility are what comes to mind (as you certainly have heard already).

Time is always a factor and let’s be honest – every saved minute in playing the do-it-yourself game is a step towards more time for writing and promotion – dynamic tasks, requiring one’s attention day in and day out.

Moving from Blogger to WordPress has an added advantage – an advantage you might need or might not need, depending on how you’d like to use your blog. On to the next paragraph.

A Self-Hosted WordPress Gives You Freedom

The Blogger platform offers a way to monetize what you write – in the form of Google AdSense advertisements.

However, affiliate marketing i.e. promoting other people’s products and earning a percentage (50-60% in most cases) of the sales is one of the best ways to make some cash from your hard work as a blogger.

And the problem with Blogger is that you never know if you are actually going against their TOS. You are working on their property, not yours!

With a self-hosted WordPress, you simply don’t have to worry about that (I’ve a dedicated server, see HostGator review here).

Moving From Blogger to WordPress – Conclusion

Before deciding whether doing the move is worth it:

Consider the money investment – do you really need a paid hosting or can you go with what Blogger has to offer?

Consider the whole process – doing the whole move took me close to two weeks. Right now might not be the best time for such a long pause, especially if you are just starting and trying to build a name for yourself.

Consider whether you actually need it – if you haven’t yet began monetizing and you’ve found the right widgets and functionality, you probably don’t need WordPress just yet.

Final Words

On to you!

What do you think of the Blogger service – is it underrated or is the negative feedback well deserved?

And what about WordPress – is it really the better option, what flaws does it have?